The Trumpology series of columns are also published on Capitol Hill Blue where I am a columnist, and are informed by my 40 years of experience as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. I worked in Michigan as Mason Mental Health Center director and Middleboro, Massachusetts in private practice. Opinions on Trump come from my understanding of psychiatric diagnosis, psychology, and psychopathology. I consider Trump to be a sadistic impulsive malignant narcissist.

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July 3, 2016

Sunday, July 17, 2016Slow news day so far, so let’s start with this tidbit: Even Chuck Norris won’t speak at the GOP convention.

Back in 2012 Chuck Norris Warned of '1,000 Years of Darkness' If Obama was Re-Elected

Saturday, July 16, 2016:

This will likely go down in history as one of the greatest graphic design flubs of all time… if the Trump camp keeps it after all the ridicule. Of course the original isn’t a GIF, courtesy of Samantha Bee:Breaking the mattresses of America..

Take the poll hereIn my three polls over a month of the very liberal readers of Daily Kos, there was gradual shift among the 200 or so responders towards slightly more than 50% wanting Elizabeth Warren to run for VP with Hillary. I wanted this when I thought - hoped really - that Hillary just couldn’t loose to the likes of Donald Trump. Now pundits are saying that the race will be close. I don’t know who to believe - Bill Maher was asked by Chris Mathews what he thought and said he thought there was only a 20% chance Hillary would win, but then admitted he was saying that to make sure no Democrats got complacent. He then said he thought the race would be close but Hillary would win.I had based my support for Warren on her being the best possible VP and the most influential (in a good way) since Cheney.Now I am afraid. Politico polled the 200 or so members of a caucus of Democrats they put together and among all the possibilities the majority, 37% picked Tim Kaine. Vilsack, Warren, and Castro were tied at 11.5%. Booker and Brown were not far behind.If this is what the insiders think, who am I to go against them?We’ll know soon. But right now I think she will choose Kaine, even though I think in a better world Warren would be the best choice.

Mike Pence: Sarah Palin Without The Charisma

It is too amazing to be true. Donald Trump charged Arthur Culvahouse, the same DC lawyer who vetted Sarah Palin, with vetting his VP choices.

And Trump has ended up picking Sarah Palin, without the charisma.

One source who used to work as a senior staff member in the House of Representatives told me, “Pence, smart? I used to eat salads at the Rayburn cafeteria that had more brains than Mike Pence.” read more Huffington Post

Friday, July 15, 2016Amid horrifying photos of the carnage in Nice — which we look at online in disbelief as we try not to imagine what the victim hidden under a cloth looks like after being mowed down by a 16 ton truck, Newt Gingrich (needless to be say, someone Trump seriously considered as his running mate) gives us a headline to look at which is horrifying in a different way:

On Fox, Newt Gingrich Calls For Testing Everyone Of A "Muslim Background" In The US For Sharia Beliefs

Trump’s story reminds me of a small movie about a self-effacing housewife in Great Britain who goes from being a village activist to being prime minister. She never really ran for the position, she just got so popular she won by acclamation. (I don’t remember the film’s name and can’t find it on Google — let me know if you remember it.)

Trump is doing pretty much the same thing except he is formally running for president like a banshee chasing a Hogwarts wizard, and he is a bombastic egotist; but he’s doing so by making up his own rules.

There’s a real attraction to people who can do this. By far most of us go through life adhering, sometimes reluctantly, to the rules society sets. We admire people, in real life or in fantasy, who succeed by ignoring or breaking the rules as long as we like what they achieve and don’t offend our personal moral and ethical codes.

If you take away all the horrendous things Trump says, and the endless laudatory self-references, and the unhinged word salad of his stream of thought verbiage, we’d admire any politician who could run a campaign without well-staffed - or even staffed - offices in every state.

We’d be glad to see a candidate who didn’t need notes, let alone a teleprompter, to speak for an hour by talking spontaneously with conviction about “how” he or she would make all the things happen that you want to happen. Okay, I admit us liberals would rather that our candidates actually explained how they would make these things happen. But then, we’re a pretty smart lot and don’t get bored by details.

We be pleased that our candidate wasn’t flooding the airwaves with endless commercials.

We enjoy seeing how close our candidates were with their families and how involved they were in the campaign.

Considering that Trump says he only needs to sleep four hours a night, ignoring the fact that his brain might need a full eight hours, we might say that a president who gives the country an extra four hours a day is a bonus.

I admit that my perfect liberal candidate would be someone like my old top-of-his class as McGill family doctor, a shoutout to Frank Finkelstein, who was a “doctor’s doctor.” Many of his patients were also doctors. When he sent you to a specialist because he thought something was amiss, he was always right. My candidate would be like Dr. Finkelstein who, one of his nurses told me, was reputed to be able to keep a rock alive when he was a chief resident.

I’d want my candidate to be a wise, compassionate, humble genius who would get elected just by being themselves.

I’d want them to attract the absolute best and brightest people into government at all levels.

I’d want them to inspire bright and ambitious young men and women to eschew striving for big-bucks jobs and work in public service.

What can I say? I’d want my candidate to be like George Washington without the slaves.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

My poll on Daily Kos

A Case For Elizabeth Warren For Vice President made almost three months ago, and I think there’s even a better case being made today. See Huffington Post article here:

I’ve been reading articles about the pros and cons of Hillary choosing Elizabeth Warren to run as her vice president should she get the nomination Is it better for liberals that she run as veep or stay in the Senate? My answer is that she will have a greater impact as vice president.

In my reading what surprised me was a reminder that she’s 66 years old. Somehow she always struck me as 10 years younger. Like many I thought she might be positioned to run for president in four or eight years. Not that running at 72 would diminish her chances, but if she runs in eight years she’d be 76.

I’ve been catching up on Veep, so I must admit my opinions about the power of the VP might have been influenced by this. I have to admit that I just started watching the second season of Veep, the HBO comedy show that stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and that this has influenced my opinion about the potential clout of a vice president. Aside from comic turns such as getting groped by the husband of the prime minister of Finland, her vice president, Selena Meyer, manages to exercise a lot of power, often because the never-seen POTUS is disengaged and inept. Think a Dick Cheney to George W. Bush. Of course the dynamic would be the complete opposite if she were a President Warren working under a President Clinton.

Aside from the treasure trove of imagined SNL comedy sketches about back-room cat fights between the two, these strong willed women might be able to become the greatest and most change making POTUS/VPOTUS team in history. And, for progressives, they’d be ours.

Cheney was the dark lord, and will go down in history as such. Elizabeth Warren could become the most influential progressive vice president in history.

Of all the names I’ve seen mentioned, Warren is the only one who came up early on as someone many progressives wanted to see run for president. Undoubtably she will want to be involved in major decision making and also have areas of import that she is in charge of. Given the overlap of her interests with Bernie Sanders’ she would be able to run as Hillary’s Bernie, and function as such in the Executive Branch.

What about losing Warren in the Senate? With Warren as veep, there are other influential progressive senators who will have a lot of impact, including Bernie (assuming he’s not president), Sherrod Brown, Amy Klobuchar, and my state’s own Jeff Merkley.

While balancing the ticket with a Hispanic, something pundits have suggested as good strategy, has its merits, I think a good case can be made for running a true power-ticket, and that would be Clinton-Warren. Read 52 comments here.

Reading these, I am temped to resort to a smug “I told you so” but will wait until after Hillary selects Elizabeth.

I started polling readers. On June 10 the results from 185 voters was 44% yes, and 54% no. Things have changed in only a few weeks. In my last poll, on June 29th, I asked what Kos readers thought. With 209 responding, it was 54% yes for Elizabeth, 33% no, and 13% to soon to decide. Take the new poll here.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016Samantha Bee nails something that drives us crazy…. the empty podiums shown on TV for extended periods…. the new MSNBC slogan:

Bernie lackadaisically endorsed Hillary as she stood uncomfortably by his side. Then, arms around each others backs, they waved while Hillary's liplocked expression could barely be called a smile, and Bernie managed something between a grimace and a smile.

We love the crowds. Each other? Not so much.

Stronger together? We can only hope.

Oh Bernie, Bernie, Bernie…..

Monday, July 11, 2016 -

As if it isn’t bad enough that the world looks at the United States and sees the face of Donald Trump as a potential president, this photo is now being described in the international press as “legendary.”

But intense attention, however, has been focused on the image of the arrest of a lone woman in a flowing dress that has since gone viral. The woman stands, arms crossed, in front of a phalanx of officers, silent — even serene — but seemingly refusing to budge.

Although the woman’s identity is not yet confirmed, her actions were described in detail by the photographer who captured the image.

“A group of demonstrators had formed a blockade — blocked Airline Highway, which runs in front of Baton Rouge Police headquarters,” Jonathan Bachman, a New Orleans–based photographer who was on assignment for Reuters, told the Atlantic. Bachman said officers belonging to several divisions of Louisiana law enforcement, many clad in riot gear, descended on the highway to clear the protesters from its path.

“I saw this woman, and she was standing in the first lane in that road,” he said. “It happened quickly, but I could tell that she wasn’t going to move, and it seemed like she was making her stand. To me it seemed like: You’re going to have to come and get me.”

Bachman further stressed that in contrast to the violence and confrontation that has marked other protests across the country (some of which also broke out in Baton Rouge later), this interaction was completely peaceful.

“It wasn’t very violent. She didn’t say anything,” he added. “She didn’t resist, and the police didn’t drag her off.”

The image was shared widely on social media and by publicationsworldwide, with one commenter on the page of New York Daily Newsreporter Shaun King calling it a “legendary” picture that will someday be in “history and art books,” according to the BBC.

King himself later tweeted that he had spoken to one of the woman’s best friends, and added that she had a 5-year-old son. Although he did not reveal her identity, he subsequently tweeted that she had been released from prison on Sunday evening.

Featured story from Vox

This is not a profile of Hillary Clinton. It is not a review of her career or an assessment of her campaign. You won’t find any shocking revelations on her emails, on Benghazi, on Whitewater, or even on her health care plan.

This is an effort to answer a question I’ve been struggling with since at least 2008: Why is the Hillary Clinton described to me by her staff, her colleagues, and even her foes so different from the one I see on the campaign trail?

I’ve come to call it “the Gap.” There is the Hillary Clinton I watch on the nightly news and that I read described in the press. She is careful, calculated, cautious. Her speeches can sound like executive summaries from a committee report, the product of too many authors, too many voices, and too much fear of offense. CONTINUE

Sunday, July 10, 2016: Unfuckenbelievable Trump Department

Would Donald Trump Quit if He Wins the Election? He Doesn’t Rule It Out

The traditional goal of a presidential nominee is to win the presidency and then serve as president.

Presented in a recent interview with a scenario, floating around the political ether, in which the presumptive Republican nominee proves all the naysayers wrong, beats Hillary Clinton and wins the presidency, only to forgo the office as the ultimate walk-off winner, Mr. Trump flashed a mischievous smile.

“I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens,” he said minutes before leaving his Trump Tower office to fly to a campaign rally in New Hampshire.

It is, of course, entirely possible that Mr. Trump is playing coy to earn more news coverage. But the notion of the intensely competitive Mr. Trump’s being more interested in winning the presidency than serving as president is not exactly a foreign concept to close observers of this presidential race.

Early in the contest, his rivals, Republican operatives and many reporters questioned the seriousness of his candidacy. His knack for creating controversy out of thin air (this week’s edition: the Star of David Twitter post) and his inclination toward self-destructive comments did not instill confidence in a political culture that values on-message discipline in its candidates. New York Times

Dallas killer did not have PTSD… a story you may not see in the mainstream.

The path from serving in Afghanistan to slaughtering police officers may have started when he was disgraced for harassing women in his unit.

Two years – perhaps to the very day – before he murdered five Dallas police officers, Micah Johnson returned from Afghanistan a changed man.

"He was withdrawn, didn't want to talk to people anymore, didn't believe in God anymore," a family friend named Myrtle Booker recalled to the Dallas Morning News.

And Booker was not the only one who described Johnson as withdrawn. The obvious explanation would have been that he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as have too many returned vets who experienced the horrors of our longest war. But by numerous reports, Johnson and his Army Reserves engineering unit did not see so much as a moment of combat.

At least part of Johnson’s manifest transformation seems to have been the result not of PTSD, but of what might be termed PTDD, Post Traumatic Disgrace Disorder. Continued on Daily Beast

And then there’s Trump… not exactly the great pacifier….

1. This tweet: “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!”

2. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. ... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. ... It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably—probably—from the Middle East.”

3. After the Trump supporters who, inspired by his anti-immigration message, beat up a homeless Latino man, Trump responded, “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”

4. In response to the black man roughed up by Trump supporters during his protest of a Trump rally, the candidate said, “Maybe he should have been roughed up. It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”

5. When discussing Muslims on 9/11: “I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”

6. After calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” he explained that “until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”

7. In response to Anderson Cooper’s question, “do you think Islam is at war with the West?” Donald Trump explained, “I think Islam hates us, there is something—there is something there that is a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There’s an unbelievable hatred of us.”

Saturday, July 9, 2016"Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

This photo shows soldiers who look warm and fuzzy, even with the bayonets on their rifles, compared to the heavily armed and armored police you see at demonstrations today. This is from the Kerner Report: The police received the most scrutiny in the report. In a haunting section, the report explained, “Negroes firmly believe that police brutality and harassment occur repeatedly in Negro neighborhoods.” The rioting had shown that police enforcement had become a problem not a solution in race relations. More aggressive policing and militarized officers had become city officials’ de facto response to urban decay. “In several cities, the principal response has been to train and equip the police with more sophisticated weapons.” The report stressed that law-enforcement officers were not “merely a spark factor” to the riots but that they had come to symbolize “white power, white racism, and white oppression.”

“Segregation and poverty,” the report said, “have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” The riots in Newark and Detroit, the report continued, “were not caused by, nor were they the consequences of, any organized plan or ‘conspiracy.’” The rioters were educated and had been employed in recent years; most of them were furious about facing constant discrimination when seeking new employment, trying to find a place to live, or, worst of all, interacting with hostile law-enforcement officials.

The police received the most scrutiny in the report. In a haunting section, the report explained, “Negroes firmly believe that police brutality and harassment occur repeatedly in Negro neighborhoods.” The rioting had shown that police enforcement had become a problem not a solution in race relations. More aggressive policing and militarized officers had become city officials’ de facto response to urban decay. “In several cities, the principal response has been to train and equip the police with more sophisticated weapons.” The report stressed that law-enforcement officers were not “merely a spark factor” to the riots but that they had come to symbolize “white power, white racism, and white oppression.”

Our choices:Clinton

The problem today is that politics might once again be moving in the wrong direction, not unlike what happened in 1968. Structural racism has to be addressed, but Obama is a lame-duck president with a Republican Congress that is unwilling to work on any legislative proposal that this White House sends them. The prospects of this Congress making progress on any kind of federal criminal-justice reforms are slim to none. And though Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has taken a much tougher stand in calling for criminal-justice reform and fighting for racial justice, she does not have an extensive record of dealing with institutional racism, and in the 1990s, she supported federal crime policies that only bolstered the law-and-order approach. Like Humphrey, she has shown a willingness to allow the political fears of the right push her toward a more conservative stance on these issues.

And then there’s Trump...

And then there’s Trump. Last year, he said of the Black Lives Matter movement: “I think they’re trouble. I think they’re looking for trouble.” And, though Trump mentioned the “senseless, tragic” deaths of the two victims in Louisiana and Minnesota in his statement after Dallas, there is little reason to think he will pay much attention to systemic racism and police violence. In the coming months, Trump instead will likely continue to play to the worst racial sentiment in the electorate and use this moment to build support for expanding rather than reforming the way that criminal justice is administered in America.

During the late 1960s, the United States saw firsthand what could happen when institutional racism was allowed to persist. The racial violence Americans have witnessed in the past three years has brought the nation to another inflection point. Unfortunately, the political winds could easily blow the electorate in the wrong direction—again.

TRUMP, THE MAN AND THE IMAGE

His words increasingly signify his confusion about who he is and what he has got himself into. From The New Yorker

The presumptive Presidential nominee of the Republican Party—let’s call him Donald Trump, though “Donald Trump” is more like it—has a way with words, after a fashion. The mouth moves and stuff comes out. (“That could be a Mexican plane up there. They’re getting ready to attack.”) Except when he reads from a teleprompter, the words paradoxically seem both calculated and careless. Trusting a G.P.S. all his own, Trump is most at ease wandering syntactically all over the map until he spots an off-ramp: “Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” “Goofy Elizabeth Warren,” “Build a Wall.” The result ain’t oratory. Still, the words entertain, wound, outrage, delight, bemuse, stupefy. More than a year into Trump’s candidacy, they also signify the speaker’s confusion about who he is and what he has got himself into.

Throughout the primaries, Trump rallies routinely featured his boasts about the most recent polling results. In the absence of plausible policy specifics, a coherent philosophy, a regard for nuance, or an acknowledgment of the exigencies of governance, this ritual seemed an end in itself. From there, he would ramble on about China, winning, losing, Islamic terror, Muslims, Mexicans, bigness, something about something that must be true because he read it or heard it somewhere, the disgusting lying press, and, inevitably, his fantastic super-successful incredibly intelligent self. The faithful could never get enough. One can imagine George Orwell trapped in a sea of waving “Make America Great Again!” signs when he found the poetry to define the design of political language: “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

One can only hope department:

"At some point, it will hit his followers that they’ve been sold out by a huckster who coveted their votes only for the sake of his colossal self-regard. And that, all along, he had nothing real to offer." ♦

Friday, July 8, 2016: A day without news.

From 7 AM until 10 PM I had no idea what was transpiring in Dallas. I drove from Portland to Seattle to visit an old friend who I hadn’t seen in 30 years. Listening to satellite radio it was all a tape music show from the seventies so there was no news. Once in Seattle, we walked through the amazing Seattle attraction, Pike’s Place Market where I doubt many people knew what was happening in Dallas. It was a great day spent getting reacquainted and discovering, as often happens with reunions with old pals, that our relationship had picked up where it left off and we still could talking about anything. I left at 5 PM but was caught in heavy traffic for more than four hyper-caffeinated hours trying to stay alert in the rain which made visibility problematic. When I got home I called my friend and she told me not to watch the news because it was so awful it would keep me awake half the night. Of course I couldn’t resist. I turned on MSNBC and saw the all too familiar pictures of police cars with flashing lights and cops huddling behind them with guns drawn. So I didn’t slept much last night since every time I woke up I checked the TV. Now there’s no sense writing about the issues about race relations and policing once again highlighted in a terrible way. Instead I will say that in some ways this is the best talking point for Republicans, who will no doubt figure out a way to blame everything they can twist into a condemnation of Democrats. On the other hand, it is the worst thing for Republicans, since it will dominate the news for at least a few days, thus taking the focus away from Hillary’s “treasonous” emails and how they prove she is too reckless and inept to be president.Thursday, July 7, 2016 I will be on the road driving to Seattle so it’s unlikely I will be able to update this website. Just for now we all need to consider what will happen if enough Republican delegates realize that Trump is just BATSHIT CRAZY and is incapable of controlling his unhinged diatribes so they nominate somebody else. I’m hearing more and more pundits say that the problem is not that he doesn’t want to tone down his rhetoric, it’s that he can’t.

“All In With Chris Hayes:”
Kendal Unruh, the Ohio Republican delegate who is one of the leaders of the stop Trump movement.

What a nightmare scenario for Clinton who is all set to run against Trump. She’ll need an entirely new game plan for whoever is nominated, be it Rubio, Bush, Cruz, Kasich, Ryan, or somebody else.Wednesday, July 6, 2016

I won’t point out the obvious in this photo of the short fingered vulgarian.

In an article describing the speech where Trump got a lot of negative media attention for praising Saddam Hussein he also dropped in a few morsels of psychopathology:

Other topics explored included: Obama’s carbon footprint for flying in an “old” plane (Air Force One), Trump’s ability to phone into television shows, Obama’s golf schedule and proof that Trump did indeed have real hair.

What struck me first was his called Air Force One an “old plane.” The two highly customized Boeing 747’s used as presidential planes are going to be replaced with newer planes. No doubt Trump envisions implementing that into his first 100 day plan, even before starting construction on his decidedly unglamorous wall.Trump’s “little” Boeing 757 — you know, the one fitted with gold plated fixtures and seat belt buckles — is 25 years old, about the same age as the Air Force One 747’s. Upgraded passenger planes in service for 20 years aren’t considered old by airline standards. However the new planes are much more energy efficient.While the plane called by some “ Trump Force One,” is fitting for a mere low level hedonistic billionaire, it hardly compares to the genuine Air Force One.Here’s a look at Trump’s plane.

Was the Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch meeting a brilliant, if devious, ploy to get the email issue over and done with?Loretta Lynch said that she wouldn’t involve her department in the process which usually follows an FBI investigation. By leaving the decision as to whether our not involve the DOJ in deciding whether or not to prosecute to the recommendation of the FBI, the matter should be decided. Now that the FBI has announced they didn’t find any reason to prosecute, in retrospect this looks like this Monday, July 4, 2016Narcissist Trump can’t apologize, and nobody will say "why don’t you just say I’m sorry?"

A photo by Evgenii Khaldeai showing a Jewish couple
wearing stars as they were required to do in Nazi-occupied areas.

There’s been lots of commentary about the Star of David being used in a Trump Tweet, but I have another take on it. No matter whether or not, consciously or unconsciously, somebody used the symbol so powerful and symbolic to Jews and others to appeal to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, there are other facts that have to be considered.

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What we heard was denial, especially from the wormy Corey Lewandowski, saying it was merely meant to be a star, or a sheriff’s star. And, in the Trumpian manner, comes a heeping helping of blame the media deflection.

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All over the news this morning is that Trump is defending the original post, despite the fact that it originated first from a notoriously racist Tweeter, and then was repost on a racist website. I have yet to hear someone confront a Trump surrogate by directly asking why Trump can’t simply say he is sorry.

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Admit he or someone associated with him made a mistake? Really, and pigs fly and Shrek is real.

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About the closest to an apology that has come from the Trump camp is that their deleting the star and replacing it with a circle was enough to show they recognized it was inappropriate. Some Republican on MSNBC just said that everyone in the campaign “regrets that this has happened.” Of course they do! Because it was wrong? No, because they had to do damage control.

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HERE ARE MY FACTS

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Fact 1) Many people were offended, and nobody apologized.

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Fact 2) “I’m sorry” is something children usually learn early on to say when they’ve done something wrong, whether deliberate or not. If you say something that hurts someone’s feelings, you say that you are sorry.

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Fact 3) People with narcissistic personality disorder never apologize. They feel no shame.

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All this brings to mind the most famous line from the Army-McCarthy hearings:

I meant to do you no personal injury, and if I did, beg your pardon.

Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch.

BRAIN ON DRUGS

07.03.16 4:10 AM ET

It's going to be pretty hard to keep weed illegal when your grandparents are smoking it to prevent Alzheimer's.

This week scientists found evidence that the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), may be able to remove the buildup of a toxic protein linked to Alzheimer’s. It’s good news for the fastest growing group of marijuana users—seniors—and gives those above the age of 50 who haven’t come out of the pot closet a good reason to do so. LINK

The beta amyloid (Aβ) and other aggregating proteins in the brain increase with age and are frequently found within neurons. The mechanistic relationship between intracellular amyloid, aging and neurodegeneration is not, however, well understood. We use a proteotoxicity model based upon the inducible expression of Aβ in a human central nervous system nerve cell line to characterize a distinct form of nerve cell death caused by intracellular Aβ. It is shown that intracellular Aβ initiates a toxic inflammatory response leading to the cell's demise. Aβ induces the expression of multiple proinflammatory genes and an increase in both arachidonic acid and eicosanoids, including prostaglandins that are neuroprotective and leukotrienes that potentiate death. Cannabinoids such as tetrahydrocannabinol stimulate the removal of intraneuronal Aβ, block the inflammatory response, and are protective. Altogether these data show that there is a complex and likely autocatalytic inflammatory response within nerve cells caused by the accumulation of intracellular Aβ, and that this early form of proteotoxicity can be blocked by the activation of cannabinoid receptors. CONTINUED

I didn’t read the 800 page Benghazi report but someone did, give me a break, Gowdy wanted people to print it out…
In one sentence:The internal documents don’t prove evidence of a scandal, but they do show an administration reflexively concerned with the politics of a national security emergency.Friday, July 1, 2016Quote of the day: “Donald Trump is like the ball in a pinball game.” Stuart Evans on the Lawrence O’Donnell show on MSNBC.Evans wrote a book about a president similar to Trump, except he never could have imagined a president as batshit crazy as Trump.

A few years ago I started noodling on a novel that I hoped would expose the fault lines that seemed to be splitting our politics. My thought was to take reality and push it to the edge both for comic affect and to offer up a cautionary tale of where our politics might be headed. I finished the book in the summer of 2015 and I was a little worried that I had gone too far. How believable would it be that a xenophobic Republican who wanted to ban immigration and deport millions might actually be a real contender for president?
Well, now we know. Donald Trump hasn’t called for a new Bill of Rights like Armstrong George, the handsome fire-breather in my novel, The Innocent Have Nothing To Fear, but he’s the first candidate who’s running as if the Bill of Rights doesn’t exist. (If we get through this election without some reporter asking Trump if he can name the amendments in the Bill of Rights, it will be a crying shame.) Even while channeling my darkest impulses—and Lord knows we all have them, which is probably the key to Trump’s success so far—it never occurred to me that a candidate for president of the United States of America could call for a religious test to enter the United States without being considered a frothing lunatic. Continued on Daily Beast

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May, 1, 2016

I migrated everything from April to the basement file cabinet, so fitting of Spring, this blog starts anew, unfortunately, again it’s Trump on my mind. The archives for the two months I have been sharing cyberspace with billions of bloggers are below.

If you are a new reader, welcome. I do this blog alone, but always welcome critiques and ideas from you, I mean you, whoever is actually reading these words.